“Am I, therefore, to go hang myself in my garters, or yours, if you will give them to me?”
“If you do, I shall be the first to run and cut you down.”
“Sweet it were,” he murmured, “to be even cut down by your fair hand. If one was sure that you would come in time——”
“You will be reasonable, dear sir, and you will neither say nor do anything silly.”
“I do not suppose I shall pine away in despair; nor shall I hang my head; nor shall I go about saying that there are as good fish in the sea as ever came out of it, because, when we fished you, we fished the best. And I swear. Kitty”—here he did swear after men’s profane way, but he needed not to have sworn so loudly or so long—“that truly, sweet Kitty, thou art the fairest, the loveliest, and the best fish that ever came out of any sea—a bewitching mermaid! I wish thee a good husband.
“On Stella’s lap he laid his head,
And, looking in her eyes,
He cried, ‘Remember, when I’m dead,
That I deserved the prize.’”
“Thank you, Sir Miles. A shorter and a less profane oath would surely have better graced the subject.”
“It cannot be graced too much,” he said, as if to swear lustily was to confer honour upon the woman he thought to love. “For your sake, Kitty, I would ever forswear punch, tobacco, and strong waters; drink nothing but October; and never get drunk save on Saturday nights: for your sake would I go live in the country among the cocks and the hens, the ducks and the pigs; for you would I go religiously to church every Sunday at forenoon, and expect the parson for the beef and pudding after the sermon; for your sake would I gamble no more, save once in a way when quarter-day brought in the rents.”
“That would be a mighty reformation indeed, Sir Miles.”
“Now, however, since you will not have me, I shall play with four hundred a year out of the six. But I will be careful, all the same: I shall punt low, and never lose more than a guinea a night.”